


Fall Together

by Lynds



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Charles Has Issues, Charles Xavier Needs a Hug, Erik Has Feelings, Erik Lehnsherr Loves Charles Xavier, Erik is a Sweetheart, Erik needs a hug, I wrote my feels about Things, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Nobody - Freeform, On the Run, Past Child Abuse, Protective Charles Xavier, Protective Erik Lehnsherr, Running Away, X-Men: First Class Fix It, because apparently I still have feelings about that, how the fuck is that not a tag?, that's who, who needs one more?, writing as therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:08:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26163157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lynds/pseuds/Lynds
Summary: They do not stand together, they run.They flee the fury of the humans and their narrow minded governments and Erik knows this life. He knows and hates it, but he looks to the man beside him, glowing in the early morning sun, and he loves.
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Comments: 6
Kudos: 49





	Fall Together

**Author's Note:**

> Ehhh maybe this is a little pretentious, but I wrote it when I had Many Feelings and I kinda like it so... guess I'm enjoying being pretentious!? I mean, I'm finding it next to impossible to write anything at all at the moment ;_;
> 
> The title is from the _beautiful_ [Fall Together by Thea Gillmore](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMcUMqK49lo).
> 
> _I've got two little birds caged right here in my ribs,  
>  To keep them safe from saboteurs and arsonists.  
> I was built for any kind of weather  
> Anyone can fall apart,  
> Let's fall together._

There are things that Erik knows to avoid. That no matter how invulnerable Charles would make himself appear, can set him to trembling, an irrational fear disproportionate to the power he possesses in response. Things like his father’s study. A certain brand of gin. Touching him on the back of his neck. Holding him down during sex.

In the months after Cuba, the decisions that are made and the splintering of possibility in every moment (the thoughts of unplayed futures wake Erik from dark dreams), he learns to read Charles more. The brittleness of a smile. The tension when certain assumptions are made about his upbringing and the ease thereof. Erik becomes a telepath with a subject of one. He alone knows when to reach for Charles’ hand beneath the table. He alone knows when to pull his lover aside and tuck his small body against his own, protective, strong, a cage to which, no matter how often he is freed, Charles willingly returns to imprison himself.

They do not stand together, they run. They flee the fury of the humans and their narrow minded governments and Erik knows this life. He knows and hates it, but he looks to the man beside him, glowing in the early morning sun, and he loves.

***

There are things that Charles feels as spears to his heart, knowing they live in Erik’s. Words which, while Erik stands tall and brilliant as the steel that limns his mind, cut him unseen. Slurs and hate and dismissal Charles has heard his entire life and yet, though it shames him, it never made him as angry as it makes him now. 

He knows from Erik’s mind, body and soul, the cruelty humanity is capable of, and in so impersonal a way. While anger, fear and jealousy structured his own past, in Erik’s, he sees blank faces. Dismissal. Passing horror-interest in his existence, as if those people thought merely of cattle or vermin when they saw him. The thought of his fate, the fate of his people… it is depersonalised.

Erik is used to looking into the mirror of others’ eyes and seeing a non-human.

And yet, Charles knows as he touches Erik’s face, as he wakes him from nightmares that break, break, break him, Erik is the most human, no, the _best_ that humanity has to offer. He is the best man created by a god Charles has never believed in, and he lies in the circle of Charles’ arms, allows him to hold him captive. Allows him to give Erik the best protection he has to offer, and that, Charles knows without undue modesty, is exceptional. Charles will not let anyone else drive daggers into the kind, loving heart at the core of Erik.

Had he not listened early on, Charles believes he would have fallen, they both would have, to their respective vulnerability. Charles to his arrogance, Erik to his heart. Charles has chosen selfishness. He has chosen to listen, truly listen, and now they are fallen another way, they have fallen together, towards love.

***

Charles has torn Shaw’s life from him. Erik has broken the missiles of the two great world powers to dust and scattered them to the wind. In his dreams, Charles sees Raven turn to them both. Sees her see him. _Go,_ she says, again and again in every memory. Go, she says, and they are gone. Gone from the perception of everyone there, gone to the teleporter’s mind, gone to Southern Rhodesia - why? He doesn’t know. It simply happened as he triggered Azazel’s power. He sent the man back before he could look around him.

He and Erik stand side by side. They run side by side. They hunt, because Erik has not yet learned that the hole in his heart where his mother was torn away cannot be filled with blood. They weep, because they trust one another. They love, because it is deep in the marrow of them now. They live for each other, and one night, in the sanctuary of their minds, they admit to dreaming. Not nightmares, they have those too. But dreams of hope and freedom, and standing side by side under the blue sky without fear.


End file.
